metempsychosis

[edit: whee! red! ...lj kn0wz m3, it appears. ;)]
(gancked from chaobell)

mmm. Strange day: late in, missed Latin because i was embarassed at how late i was(...i'm going to be /skewered/, olwmai), survived the rest of the schoolday by learning a passage of aristophanes in the half-hour i could have spent in latin, got out and to the greasy_spoon and am /still/ feeling full of milky-tea-no-sugar. Saw people from my year there, for once - although they'd been first brought there by Sar, who I took there her first time, so... yeah. - and once they'd gone finished my food and drank more tea, smoked and read Arthur Miller and felt... strange. I'm not incredibly fond of Death of a Salesman, which is the one I actually have to study, but I now appear to adore "A Memory of Two Mondays". And then something of Arthur Miller, something of these types of plays, fell on the air and blanketed it soft.

A man came in at some point - didn't see when, maybe he was always there - and stood speaking to the guys behind the counter. He was talking about the way this man who spoke to him had been on the beaches at the british "invasion of europe" and come back without a scratch on him; about how they put him himself (the man speaking) in a psychiatric hospital because he'd been in a care home; about how some man said that they'd get him locked away unless he joined a coven of witches and went twice a week, as well as pouring boiling water on cats and dogs because in those days you would only get a fine for that kind of cruelty to household animals if you were poor, whereas nowadays it's a lot more of a crime and you can get locked up for it, that he'd never done that and so he'd been locked up; about how they only targeted him because he had no parents or relations to go to and tell about what they were saying to him; about how at the care home the people in charge had told him they were demons and that he was secretly their demon child and therefore they had to hurt him because he'd been bad - but not, not kill him because then they'd get done.

The men behind the counter listened to him. They asked questions about what he was saying and heard the convolutions of the tale become thicker, only the faintest trace of disbelief in the way the words were spoken. After a while, one of them suggested he go, and he wandered off perfectly happily. When he had left, a song came on the radio, some version of "Somewhere" from West Side Story. One man turned to the other and explained that he had been in the recording studio when the song was recorded.

I wonder: did I hear these words, or imagine them? It all seems so out of place: everything so normal, so ordinary, and yet these words and the reaction not disbelieving because that would be impolite. The man is the ancient mariner, in his shabby black windbreaker, speaking to be listened to and all disbelief suspended. Maybe what he said /was/ true: maybe everyone but me believes it: maybe I believe it.

People have dreams, and they have stories, and they have lives that they make around themselves and how can we tell if they are real or not? An empirical standard: this is not real, there are demons and witches in the story, the man himself admits to having been institutionalised, the man has a huge anorak and beard. A dubious standard: this might be real, this might be the imagination of someone trying to convince someone else of his credentials, he might think he lies, he might believe himself, other people might believe him. There's no way of knowing, really.

Does it /matter/ if they are real or not? They still exist, to one extent or another: and no memory we ever have is perfect, is an exact recollection of The Way Things Were, they are mostly imagination and just a tiny percentage it reality, not the core but just to the left of that, residue collecting on the piece of grit that hurts the oyster and makes the pearl.

Reading DoS, possibly the best thing in it is a simple inconsistency, something that leaves you wondering: it's set, when, late-forties? fifties? So the past you see must be twenties and thirties, if Biff is 35. And yet there is no strong depiction of the Depression, no idea of the repercussions of that time: somehow the Loman family appear to have weathered it almost unscathed, the problems to their lifestyle only becoming great in '49 or so. The time flips from post-WWI, twenties, boom to post-WW2, forties, boom: the thirties are almost a forgotten decade, never seem to feature in the past Inside His Head.

/pretension

Remembered to go to the bank: must write chatty letter to my cousin-who-thinks-he-is-my-uncle, and soon. These facts /are/ connected. Bad Idea, of course, because it took me into camden and toward money, even though i avoided the myriad tempations of the comic shop (must /not/ buy viz-translated gundam wing comics on whim, must stare at blind targer and wonder about getting /that/, must avoid lure of GitS or any other random dvd until am properly solvent) and the wondering whether I should get Preacher or Sandman graphic novels, even though I haven't really read them since way back when when my best friend was one of those girls who crushed all over/emulated Death (...looking back, we were more like delirium and despair. what a pair.), or try reading some Moore or Ellis.

Couldn't avoid the temptations of the second-hand cds: that obscure kind of guilt you get when you can't find the right change and the guy behind the counter says it's fine and he'll just take the tenner, never mind the rest of the money. But I now have a cd of stuff by the Big Bopper, which I think my mum will like, and more Ride (eeeeeeeeeee!) and "it's a shame about ray", since i realised i couldn't find my copy of car button cloth and want to hear evan dando's voice again. Almost bought a foetus album, until i wondered whether it was the /right/ foetus. Creed-san, it /is/ your one who has the song called 'verklemmt', right?

Made hair appointment for tomorrow: cut it off! cut it all off! it's far too long. Although that means I'll lose the actually purple bits of it, but there is always the redye, and anyway i need to rebleach. I count time in my life through cuttings and bleachings and a quick succession of pinks and reds, through different gels and a fast swipe of conditioner to keep me half-way in between dry death by split ends and floppysoft flat hair.

While buying peroxide cream for the next round of hairdeath, listened to a woman explaining how she was fed up with her daughter's mobile being stolen or rather mugged from her, had lost £140 just through that, and the last time it was she went round and got it back through asking around and shouting at people. "I mean, she's /asthmatic/!" said the woman, explaining why it was necessary for her daughter to have the mobile, or why it was so particularly wrong for the mobile to be taken off her.

I listen in on so many conversations, just by being in places, and feel like a voyeur on others' lives.